W E B Griffin - Men at War 1 - The Last Heroes

by The Last Heroes(Lit)

  Donovan was glad to hear he was in New York, he said. He had a few things to bring up involving the Whitworth Building-one of the buildings Continental owned a piece of-and if Fine was free, Why didn't they have lunch downtown? Chesty Whittaker belonged to a luncheon club at 33 Wall Street, twenty-first floor, and he should be there, too.

  After they had finished the Whitworth Building business, Fine brought up the question of Monica Carlisle's son. He asked Donovan if he happened to know anyone at the Department of State with whom he could discuss a confidential matter. Donovan not surprisingly did. Chesley Haywood Whittaker then insisted-not invited, insistedthat Fine come to Washington with him on the Congressional Limited and spend the night with him at his house on Q Street.

  "I hate that damned train, alone, and there's no sense in you going to a hotel. I won't be able to have dinner with you tonight, but I'll see that you're entertained, and meet you afterward."

  "Why don't I just go to the Hotel Washington? It's right around the comer from the State Department, and the studio keeps a suite there...."

  "Don't be silly," Whittaker said. "What I have to do is have dinner with Roosevelt. My nephew, Jim, is being sent to the Philippines, and Roosevelt wants to see him before he goes. He was close to Jimmy's father. I don't see how I can get out of it. But it'll be just that, dinner. It starts at eight-fifteen, and it'll be over by ten or tenfifteen. What I've done, and I hope this is all right with you, is arrange for a very pretty woman, a lawyer by the way and the daughter of an old friend, to take you to dinner at the Mayflower, and we'll meet you there afterward."

  "Aren't I putting you out?"

  "Not at all. I'm just sorry about the damned dinner."

  There were few people in the United States, Fine thought, who could be sincerely annoyed by the necessity of taking dinner with the President of the United States.

  The young woman had turned out not only to be as promised, young, attractive, and a lawyer, but also the daughter of the late Thomas Chenowith, another pillar of the New York legal establishment. And he was dining with the son of Chandler Bitter and nephew of Brandon Chambers.

  The odd thing, Stanley S. Fine decided, was that he liked these people and was comfortable in their presence. He felt a little jealous of Canidy and Bitter-younger men about to embark on a great adventure. It was certainly illogical that he should be jealous of young men going off to war, but he had learned at Comell something that had stuck in his mind: War was as much a part of the human condition as love and birth.

  And there was a secret side to Stanley S. Fine that not even his wife understood. If he had had his way, he would have been an aviator, not a lawyer. His heroes were Lindbergh, Doolittle, and Howard Hughes, not the august members of the Supreme Court. And while of course it could be the wine that let him think this, he sort of had the feeling that after he told Canidy and Bitter that he'd earned his commercial ticket and that he was trying to come up with the money to buy a Beechcraft, they seemed to hold him in a different light, maybe even consider him sort of an associate member of their fraternity. So far as Stanley S. Fine was concerned, being a fighter pilot was the realization of the ultimate dream.

  About to:30, Chesty and Jim Whittaker came into the dining room, followed by the headwaiter and a busboy carrying two chairs.

  Jim Whittaker quickly ducked his head and gave an unsuspecting, and immediately annoyed, Cynthia Chenowith a quick, wet kiss.

  "Jim!" she cried out, blushing. "Would you stop acting like a child and behave yourself?"

  "I have been behaving myself," he said. "Isn't that right, Chesty?"

  "With one or two minor little lapses, he was on his very best behavior 9" Chesty said, and turned to order brandy from the headwaiter.

  "And did you tell Uncle Franklin how miffed you were that he's kept you in uniform?" Canidy asked.

  "Oh yes ' " Chesty Whittaker replied, laughing. "He told him."

  "And what did he say?" Canidy asked.

  "He told me how proud the nation is of all of us who stand at the gates, defending freedom," Jim said dryly. He turned to Cynthia. "Has Canidy been making passes at you, my love?"

  "Oh, for God's sake, Jimmy!"

  "Bitter has," Canidy said. "Bitter's been feeling my knee and simultaneously making eyes at her. He's not very good in the dark. I would have said something, but he looked so happy."

  Chesty Whittaker's smile was strained.

  I did that, Canidy realized, to see what his reaction would be. And he didjust what I expected.

  "Why don't we change the subject?" Cynthia said. "And not back to airplanes, if you don't mind."

  "Well, I for one would like to hear," Chesty said, "about the Great Cedar Rapids Fire Dick Canidy had, as it were, his hand in."

  Fine told the story. He was a good storyteller, and his descriptions of the man whose Studebaker had blown up and the juvenile counselor's disappointment at losing the chance to rehabilitate Fulmar and Canidy had the others laughing boisterously.

  "And proving beyond doubt my uncle Max's belief that it's a small world, Eric Fulmar's the reason I'm in Washington," Fine said. "Eric's in Morocco, and that is worrying the studio."

  "Why should that worry the studio?" Canidy asked. "Oh, because of his mother?"

  Fine nodded. "It would be embarrassing if it became public knowledge that he exists at all, and it would probably kill her at the box office if it came out that he's part Gennan."

  "He's not a German, he's an American ' " Whittaker snorted.

  "He may think of himself as an American, but I have to establish that once and for all, and when I do, that opens the next question."

  "Which is?" Canidy asked.

  "What is the legal position, vis-A-vis the draft, of people with dual citizenship?"

  Fine said. "And of people like Eric, who are out of the country? Does the law require an expatriate to register for the draft? If so, when? When the law goes into effect? Or when the expatriate returns to the United States?"

  "Interesting question," Chesty Whittaker said.

  "And then," Canidy said, "there is the question of the draft dodger himself."

  Cynthia and Fine both gave him a dirty look.

  "Catching him, I mean," Canidy said. "After you ambulance chasers have come to all your solemn legal decisions, there is the question of applying them."

  "I can see it now," Jim Whittaker said. "A platoon of Cynthia's Foggy Bottom cronies, in top hats and morning coats, struggling through the sandy wastes..

  "With a draft notice in their hands," Canidy ordered. UT "And there, on top of the dunes, our hero..." Whittaker came in.

  "On a white stallion, dressed up like Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik, saluting..

  Whittaker demonstrated the salute, using the third finger on his left hand in an upward position.

  Canidy laughed heartily and went on. "And, with a cry of "Fuck you! I am the little boy who never existed, you can't draft me! Fight your own damned war,' galloping off into the sunset."

  "My God, you're disgusting," Cynthia said.

  "I think," Jim Whittaker said, "that you're in trouble, Richard."

  "I think you two owe everyone an apology for your vulgarity," Chesty Whittaker said furiously.

  "I'm sorry," Canidy said.

  "Well, hell, I'm not," Jim Whittaker said. "And I'm not going to be a hypocrite about it. No harm was intended."

  "You don't feel you owe Cynthia an apology, is that what you're saying?" Chesty Whittaker asked, softly and coldly. "For what?"

  "For your language and that obscene gesture."

  "This, you mean?" Jim Whittaker asked, making the gesture again. "Cynthia doesn't even know what it means. And Canidy said 'fuck,' not me."

  Chesty Whittaker's face whitened.

  "Stanley, Cynthia, I apologize to you for my nephew and his friend. I can only say that they have obviously had too much to drink."

  "I have not yet begun to drink," Whittaker said, "as one sailor or another is supposed to ha
ve said."

  "Ed," Chesty Whittaker said to Bitter, can I rely on you to get them home safely?"

  "Yes, sir," Bitter said. "And I'm sorry."

  "The two of you together are too explosive for your own good," Chesty Whittaker said.

  Then he followed Stanley S. Fine and Cynthia Chenowith out of the dining room.

  "As Jim's guest, I know I'm not in a position to say this, but I will. The two of you were disgusting," Bitter said.

  "Go with the good people, Edwin," Canidy said. "I have all the selfrighteousness I can take for one night."

  "I told Mr. Whittaker I would take care of you, and I will," Bitter said.

  Whittaker and Canidy looked at each other, and then, simultaneously, they both gave Bitter the finger.

  "Fuck you, Edwin!" they said in chorus. And laughed.

  Bitter walked quickly after the others.

  Whittaker caught the sommelier's eye and ordered a bottle of cognac.

  "Nothing very elaborate, you understand, my friend and I are just junior officers, but something decent."

  "I have just the thing, Mr. Whittaker, a very nice, not very well known label, by the people who bottle Grand Mamier."

  "That will do nicely," Whittaker said.

  When the cognac was delivered, he interrupted the waiter's ritual pouring by taking the bottle away from him and filling the snifters well over half full.

  "I am going to miss you, Richard," he said.

  "Me, too," Canidy said. "Here's to strays and orphans," Whittaker said. "You and me and Fulmar, wherever good ol'eric may be."

  They took a swallow of cognac. "Aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces," Whittaker said. "Whatever you said," Canidy said, and they took a second swallow.

  "Draft dodgers Whittaker said.

  "Especially good ol'eric, who is obviously smarter than you or me," Canidy countered.

  They drained the snifters with the third toast. Whittaker picked up the bottle and started to pour again.

  Not looking at Canidy, and very softly, he said, "I used to wonder how I knew Chesty was bedding her. I never caught them, of course. But I knew." Canidy looked at him but said nothing.

  "You realize, of course, Richard," Whittaker asked, "that I am confiding in you only because I am confident you will get your ass shot off in China?"

  Canidy nodded. "And then I knew how I knew," he said. "Because I love her.

  And because I love him."

  He handed a snifter to Canidy and raised his own.

  "Love, Lieutenant Canidy," he said. "Love, Lieutenant Whittaker," Canidy said.

  The Plantation 131bb County, Alabama June 17Y 1941

  Ann Chambers had known since she was fourteen that she had inherited her father's character and his brains and that her brothers Sam Mark and Charley had gotten from their mother their charm and their tendency to see things as they wished they were, rather than as they really were.

  They were considered charming and pleasant-and they were. Ann was considered assertive and aggressive-and she was. In fact, she had a masculine mind, she thought. She much preferred the company of men to women. And she felt she understood men in ways her girlfriends didn't... couldn't; Sarah, for instance, didn't. Sarah -had gotten itchy britches from Ed Bitter the moment she had seen him, and she had done everything but back up to him like a bitch in heat.

  Ann didn't think that was going to get Eddie Bitter to make a play for Sarah. Eddie was the Boy Scout type, who would be frightened away if a girl made herself readily available to him. All Sarah had succeeded in doing was to make him uncomfortable. As a general rule of thumb, Ann Chambers believed that the more desirable a man was, the less responsive he was to feminine wiles, She had, she admitted, itchy britches for Dick Canidy. She had been able to face this fact from practically the moment she laid eyes on him. It had been almost immediately apparent to her that Canidy was cut from the same bolt of cloth as her father. And she knew that they hadn't made very much of that particular material.

  Even Sue-Ellen had seen this special character, whatever it was, in Dick Canidy. Ann had seen Sue-Ellen looking at him, and she wasn't looking at him with the eyes of a "nice" wife and mother. Ann had heard rumors that Sue-Ellen was playing around on her husband, and Ann's reaction was that her damned-fool brother should have known better than to marry a woman who was smarter and stronger than he was. Ann was reasonably sure that, given the opportunity, Sue-Ellen might very well have made a play for Dick Canidy.

  There had been no opportunity for that, of course. Too many people around and nowhere to go.

  Too many people around had been her problem, too. Canidy would not have responded to staring soulfully at him, the way Sarah had stared at Ed Bitter, and staring soulfully was the only card Ann could have played in a house full of people. If she had given him the ofy looks, Ann was sure Canidy would have pegged her as a colgo lege tease, just a fool kid.

  The way to snag Dick Canidy was to make him come to her. She thought she had already made the first correct step in that direction: e had discussed flying with him. And he had been genuinely sursh prised to learn that she wasn't cooing at him like a schoolgirl who simply was thrilled by aviators, but that she had her private license, two hundred fifty hours, and had flown the Beech solo crosscountry to San Francisco.

  When he had time to turn that over in his mind, he would get the idea that she was something special and come after her. She would elude him until he was snared. She would become first his friend, and then give him the sex that all men were after. What more could he ask for?

  Dick Canidy was the man she wanted to marry. The proof that she made a sound judgment about him was that her father really liked him. And her father had a favorite saying when he was with his friends: "The best thing about being my age, and in my position in life, is that I no longer have to suffer fools."

  Dick Canidy was the first young man she ever saw her father seeking out because he was genuinely interested in what he had to say.

  There wasn't much time. She was going to have to move fast, to set her hook in him before he went swimming in distant waters.

  Sarah and Charity stayed five days, until June 17, and then Ann and her mother drove them to Montgomery and put them on the train back up north. On the way back to The Plantation, Ann asked her mother if it would be all right if she asked Eddie and Dick Canidy to come for another weekend.

  "Well, of course her mother said. "You liked him, didn't you?"

  "I'm going to marry him," Ann said.

  "This weekend, or after he comes back from China?" her mother replied dryly.

  "I may get unofficially engaged this weekend," Ann said, "but we'll wait until he comes back from China to get married."

  "You seem very, very sure of yourself," Jenny Chambers said. "What are you going to do if he has other plans for the weekend?"

  "He wouldn't dare!" Ann said.

  She called Pensacola Naval Air Station the moment she got back to The Lodge. She asked for Canidy, and when the operator rang the number, another operator came on and said that number was no longer in service. Then she asked for Ed Bitter's number. It was the same number she had been given for Dick Canidy.

  "Let me talk to the base public information officer," Ann said. Her mother walked into the library in time to hear and raised her eyebrows.

  "Public information, Journalist Anderson speaking, sir."

  "Ann Chambers," she said. "Nashville Courier-Gazette."

  Jenny Chambers's eyebrows rose even higher and she shook her head.

  "What can the Navy do for the Courier-Gazette?"

  "I'm trying to run down one of two sailors," she said. "Two lieutenants, one of them named Bitter, Edwin, and other one named Canidy, Richard."

  "I'm sure we can handle that," he said. "Hang on, please."

  He didn't come back on the line. An officer did.

  "This is Commander Kersey, Miss Chambers," he said. "I'm afraid we have no officers by those names on the base. May I inquire as to the re
ason you wanted to locate them?"

  "Yeah ' " Ann Chambers said. "I'm running down a story that they're going to China, and wanted to ask them about it."

  There was a pause. "Would you mind telling me where you heard that story, Miss Chambers?" Commander Kersey asked.

  "It's all over Washington, Commander," she said. "I'll check it out with the Navy Department."

  She hung up and looked at her mother.

  "Goddamn it she said. "They're already gone. Now what the t as furious with herself when she felt hell am I going o do?" She w the tears well up in her eyes.